Livingston said anti-BT sentiments are being pushed by people who want to live in the technological past, and compared their stance to the Luddites, displaced early industrial era workers who tried to fight the coming of newer technology.

"These criticisms are coming from people I can only describe as copper Luddites," he told the paper, claiming they "don't want to see the U.K. getting fiber."

Livingston also said his rivals are trying to "stop" his firm's fiber program "so they can sweat their own copper assets" and thus "want to hobble the U.K. economy for their own commercial reasons." He also said BT's network is open for use to any provider in the U.K. on the same terms as itself. As there are "50 or 60" of such providers, by definition his firm cannot be accused of running a monopoly, Livingston said.

It is true BT has committed to spend £2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) on connecting two-thirds of British homes and businesses to this technology, which can deliver faster broadband than the copper network. However, it is also true that the company is getting state subsidies in at least some projects, such as its recent announcement to hook up remote parts of Scotland to fiber, largely through subsidy from the government.

It's this kind of deal that's prompting Dunstone's attacks, with the businessman saying that regulation should be toughened to ensure BT doesn't end up with too big of an advantage in next-generation broadband delivery. "There is so much government money going into subsidizing higher broadband speeds, but no one really knows where it is going and how it is being spent," he claimed in his Financial Times interview.

It is also the case that BT remains the only company seriously bidding for contracts for this kind of rural outreach. Therefore, TalkTalk said the U.K. communications watchdog, Ofcom, should be forced to assess the wholesale price BT plans to charge for access to the super-fast broadband network.

Such a move is not very likely, which might oblige BT's competitors to keep using the press as a platform to indicate their unhappiness with its apparently irresistible rise to become the U.K.'s major fiber player, though it does face serious competition, especially in the consumer market, from John Malone's recent Liberty purchase of Virgin Media.

For example, when BT reported fiscal results for the first six months of its current financial year in February, it said its Openreach home broadband brand has 1.25 million homes signed up; Virgin has four million.

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We have a mono-culture when it comes to telecoms; it's either BT's way or it's no way. The stranglehold BT have on the UK's infrastructure is doing massive damage to our international competitiveness. We are at least a generation behind the best in the world and probably two generations behind the outstanding countries like S Korea, Japan and so on.The UK government should never have given the nation's telecoms cable network to BT. We should have pursued the Australian route where it was treated as a public good and one various companies could exploit in competition with each other.As it is we have this unreconstructed dinosaur dictating what we can and can't have and which operates in a very comfortable, unchallenged commercial environment where it can continue on its merry way unconfronted by any competitors.A good first step would be to spin off OpenReach entirely, severing all connections with BT. The board of the newly independent OpenReach should then have to include representatives from major players in the industry and from amongst the larger, most dependent on progress, consumers so that it was unable to settle back into the situation as before where it was untroubled by any market pressures and could amble along as it pleased.

Our data shows these innovators using digital technology in two key areas: providing better products and cutting costs. Almost half of them expect to introduce a new IT-led product this year, and 46% are using technology to make business processes more efficient.

Worries about subpar networks tanking unified communications programs could be valid: Thirty-one percent of respondents have rolled capabilities out to less than 10% of users vs. 21% delivering UC to 76% or more. Is low uptake a result of strained infrastructures delivering poor performance?